Ballad of a Dead Man
by Lela Bonita
Summary: Drabble. One shot. Contains major spoilers for the movie as well as references to the show.


I always kind of thought it would be boring.

You know, everything.

My life.

Even though I wanted more than anything for it to be - everything and more. I thought I would end up piloting around some upper-middle-class ship, jettisoning aimlessly from planet to planet with people who didn't know me and didn't care to. I thought I would eventually die of old age or boredom, or maybe just because there was nothing better to do.

I thought my life would be boring. I even thought my death would be boring.

It turns out that wasn't the case.

It's funny how fast things can change. She didn't like me at first, you know, Zoë. She thought there was something unsettling about me; it turns out it was just the moustache. Apparently it made me look like a serial killer, which is great, because now I know why those other guys were so nice to me in flight school; they thought I was going to murder them in their sleep.

I never once thought I would be married, you know that? Never once did it occur to me I would settle down – but then, I didn't really, you know, _settle down_, but I settled. With her. I don't mean it that way. I mean – I found _the one_. The elusive soul people crave to find. The connection with another human being, the one that really clutches at your heart, bears your soul.

That sounds creepy, actually.

I just – found her. Or she found me.

Zoë.

I never thought I would fall in love, either. Sure, affection was one thing – who hasn't experienced impure thoughts about someone before? Well, except Book, but, you know, man of God and all. Or he was, anyways.

But this love, it wasn't what I'd ever thought. This was even _more_ than love. It was passion, and dedication, and trust and – god, she's so perfect. She's beautiful, she's intelligent, she's everything and all that I could ever want and even more than that. She's just – perfect. She could have had anyone she wanted, and she chose me.

And we flew off into the sunset together.

With, um, with seven other people.

But that's not the point.

We made a life together. I could never, ever love anyone as much as I love Zoë, and it's the kind of love that just can't be quantified – it can't be explained away as a chemical reaction, or even explained as something spiritual. It was _everything_.

She gets embarrassed when I talk like this. I think I was the most emotional person on _Serenity_, and that's with a mentally unbalanced seventeen year old girl with a stripped frontal lobe on board. I'm more emotional than a paranoid schizophrenic.

Sometimes I think I made Mal uncomfortable. We had an understanding, he and I, after – after Niska. After he did what he did to us. After we shouted and cursed at each other to keep ourselves conscious, after we said horrible things to each other. We finally came to an understanding, or at least, we came to a truce.

He wasn't trying to move in on Zoë. I shouldn't have felt threatened by their friendship – I just couldn't take the buddy-buddy thing where they came back every day with the stories about the great things they did together, and the near-death they escaped. I couldn't take knowing that Mal was more than I could ever be, and I'd believed I needed to prove I could do what Mal could do – because then I would be good enough.

But then, I'd forgot that Zoë had chosen me. Zoë married me. Zoë loved me.

She loves Mal, too; just not the same way. She loves Mal in the way you love someone who's saved your life again and again, and you've saved theirs. She loves him in the sense that they have a bond no one could ever understand or break, because they've seen so many horrible things together, and the only thing that had kept them going during those times was each other; keeping each other alive.

Watching their backs.

Looking out for one another.

That's what it had been all about. I was kind of blinded to it, but hey, who wouldn't be? Mal always made me feel inadequate and I was aware of it.

But I'm still glad it was me, not Zoë, at the hands of Niska. God knows what he would have done to her, the sick bastard.

Thinking back on it all, I don't have a lot of regrets. Sometimes I wish I had been more able to – you know – help with the jobs. But we all knew it was better for all of us to stay on the ship; I wouldn't have been able to kill a man if he had a gun to my head, and I had a gun to his.

I couldn't shoot a man and forget about it. I just couldn't do it.

Not that it matters now.

I don't regret my life, though. Transporting stolen goods? No big deal.

I got to see things no one will ever see. I got a chance to witness heroes, _real honest-to-God heroes_, every damn day. I got chased by Alliance ships and lived. I nearly got shot half a dozen times and just barely escaped with my life. I got tortured for hours on end and got to see my wife again and tell her how much I love her.

I got to hear about a massive government conspiracy.

I got to see Miranda.

I got to help save the world.

I had my own special place on the ship, and I had plastic dinosaurs. River played with them sometimes.

Mal told me he was proud of me – well, he didn't say that, but he said that he knew there was a reason he'd hired me. That's as close as he'll ever get to saying it.

I don't have a lot of regrets about my life. My life –

I had a real family. We were there through thick and thin.

I got to experience love.

I got to _really live_, even though sometimes it was just that; surviving.

But I was surviving with them, and that made it worth it. I would have gone crazy on the ground.

I'm not sure what's happening right now. I stopped feeling anything a few seconds ago. I can't move my hands, and I'm pretty sure most of the blood is gone from my body. I should probably be panicking, but I know I'm dead.

The last thing I see is her.

Zoë.

Clutching desperately at me, trying to make me stand up and go with her. She knows I'm dead, too. Mal knows I'm dead, and it's why he yanks her away from me and throws her on the ground so she doesn't meet the same fate as me. They have to leave, or they'll die. I know they'll come back for me, because they can't die too.

I know he'll take care of her. He has to, or I'll haunt him, if I can figure out how to.

I'm not sure if there's anything more to this. I don't know if there's another side. Maybe I'll exist on some quasi-spiritual level.

I hope if I get reincarnated, I'll see her again.

Maybe I'll just fade away, drift off somewhere.

Like a leaf on the wind.


End file.
